


we'd up and fly (if there were wings for flying)

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Robin Hood References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: Bellamy and Wells are held captive and interrogated by the Grounders, and when he returns to Arkadia, Bellamy finds some things have changed
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 100
Collections: Chopped Madness





	we'd up and fly (if there were wings for flying)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Chopped Madness Qualifying Round so:  
>  **Character: Bellamy Blake** (Bellamy focused)  
>  **Theme: Canonverse** (arkadia days)  
>  **Trope 1: Fairy Tale AU** (Robin Hood)  
>  **Trope 2: Write a good guy as a villain** (Kane as the sheriff of nottingham but make it t100)

Bellamy blinks slowly.

It’s a dream, a recurring one, but it’s a nightmare. A memory, with which his subconscious delights to torment him. 

His eyes adjust to the first daylight he’s seen in two months, the sun filtering through the trees, dappled through the forest leaves. 

He turns and, as he knows there will be, there is an arrow lodged in Wells’ chest.

Wells’ knees buckle, and he almost smiles as he falls. Bellamy cries out and runs to him; they have not endured endless grounder interrogation to lose this unlikely friendship in their escape. 

Wells crumples. 

The leaves of the forest turn from golden sunlight to seeping maroon, as Wells’ blood stains the leaves. 

_It’s mortal,_ Wells tells him, _you have to leave me._

 _No,_ Bellamy says, begging. 

_Leave me,_ Wells says, faintly. _Take this to Clarke._

He pulls a ring off his finger and presses it into Bellamy’s hand. The forest floor grows darker and Trigedasleng cries echo through the trees. 

_The wound is near his heart,_ says a voice above Bellamy, and he remembers the grounder who helped them escape. 

_Make sure she’s safe,_ Wells whispers. _Swear you will, Bellamy._

Bellamy wants to tell him that she doesn’t need his protection, wouldn’t accept it if she did, but the forest floor is dripping and so he nods his head. 

_I swear,_ he promises. 

_Good,_ Wells says. _Tell my father I love him. Go._

The Chancellor’s son, noble and brave, bleeding and fated. 

Bellamy turns with the grounder, and slips through the trees. The Trigedasleng gets louder and he hears them discover Wells. The forest swallows them, and Bellamy cannot run fast enough or far enough to forget what he’s endured or that he’s returning to Arkadia empty handed, save with a ring for the Griffin girl. 

He runs and Lincoln runs next to him, in and out of trees, through freezing rivers, and everything is tinged maroon, his hands are never clean and when he’s wondering if he’ll ever breathe again, he wakes up. 

\--

“Take it easy there, Blake.”

Bellamy jolted as he woke, reminding himself he was safe, he was fine. It was almost dawn, in the woods outside of Arkadia that he’d bargained from Trikru, the forest where the sky people were terrified to venture. 

Murphy was stirring something over a pot, some stringent smell that could only mean fresh game, bargained from their plundering yesterday. 

When Bellamy had returned to Arkadia, it had not been the same place he’d left.

Jaha had gone on a rescue mission for his son, and hadn’t been seen in months. Marcus Kane was calling himself chancellor and exiling anyone who disagreed. Those who remained worked in a quarry south of Arkadia, breaking their backs to lug limestone, breathing dust thicker than Ark air, watched over by men in the old guard uniforms of the Ark, the weapons they carried standing out harshly against the white of the stone in the gully.

Kane stockpiled everything--weapons, food, tech--and told the people that the stone they mined would build them a safe wall against the grounders. Bellamy had felt sick, laying on the ground overlooking the quarry, recognizing those who remained of the hundred, along with their families and fellow laborers, covered in white dust. Trudging was a heavy word, and such was their existence. 

Not if he could help it.

He and Lincoln had retreated to the woods. They weren’t able to do much, but whatever they did, they could. Sneak raids to Kane’s storehouses, and parcels of food delivered in the cover of night to the doors of the downtrodden laborers. A delicate trade with the grounders, salvaged tech from Arkadia in exchange for protection for the people. Bellamy had no interest in protecting Kane’s quarry, except that he knew if it were attacked, the guards would not spare their own people in their defense of their chancellor.

Others had joined, eventually.

Murphy, for one, was thriving keeping their crew fed. Lincoln brokered trading with the grounders, and was teaching the rest of them his native tongue. Harper and Monroe were fast and moved in shadows; Jasper wasn’t much help in terms of raids, but he kept morale high, and had an intricate set of alarms set around their hideout. Raven had been working on weapons for them, she’d just shown him a terrifying rendition of a crossbow as an answer to sniper rifles. 

“You need to just talk to her.”

It took Bellamy a moment to realize Murphy was talking to him. 

“To who?” He closed his eyes again, trying to block out the early morning light.

“To whom,” Murphy clanged the wooden spoon on the handle of the pot, then shrugged. “I don’t know, whoever you’re mumbling that you swear you’ll protect.”

Clarke Griffin. 

He hadn’t talked to her in almost half a year, and even then that had only been the two months of the dropship, and never before that. What was he even supposed to say?

_Hey, sorry I couldn’t save your best friend, here’s his ring though. By the way, and I know you’re going to love this, he made me promise to keep you safe._

_You know, since I did such a bang up job of that with him._

He didn’t think that’d go over too well.

Bellamy rolled his shoulders in the hammock. “Not gonna happen.”

Murphy clanged the pot again. “K,” he sighed, “just thinking maybe it’d be cool if the guy who sends us up against automatic weapons was getting a full night of sleep.”

“Thanks for the concern, Murphy,” Bellamy muttered.

They had another run that night. Apparently Kane had found a grove of raspberries and had distilled it to a semblance or liquor; Bellamy thought it’d be better suited with a couple people whose bent backs meant sleepless and painful nights. There was a dead zone in the electric fence, and they slipped into Arkadia after midnight, nicked the wine, picked the locks of the people who needed it, and left it inside their doors. 

Originally they’d signed their gifts with ‘delinquents’, a mockery of the original sentence that had banished them to the ground, but when Kane found out about it, he’d punished the others of the hundred who were still inside. Now Bellamy signed the packages with his name--he wanted Kane to know it was him, and no one else, who was defying him.

Back at their camp, he counted everyone, even though he didn’t know what he’d do if they came up short. Everyone was accounted for, a bunch of kids sleeping in hammocks when they should have roofs. Again. 

Maybe he did need to see her.

He told Lincoln he’d be back in an hour and slipped out of camp. It was as easy to slip through the gate the second time as it had been earlier in the night. Bellamy made his way to the medical ward, guessing that that was where she’d be holed up. 

One of the doors jimmied open with a soft squawk of protest, and he slipped inside, cloth-toed shoes silent on the floors. The ward was still, and he crept along the corridor in the darkness. 

He heard her before he saw her, and was surprised that he remembered her voice. 

“...which I know will be hard, but you’ve got to keep it clean, okay?”

There was some shifting on a hard bench, and a mumbled response. Bellamy clenched his hands; the pitch of the voice meant it was a child. A child, injured, unable to get medical help until so late in the evening it was early morning. 

“Now, show me how you wash your hands, to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

There was a pause after her instruction, and Bellamy pictured the kid miming rinsing their hands off. 

“Good. Remember your nails...good.”

Bellamy was almost by the doorway, the light inside casting a yellow glow into the hallway. He tilted his head just inside, to see a mostly empty room, a bench in the middle with a young boy perched on it, and Clarke with her back to the door. The child was carefully brushing his nails on the palms of his hands, then looked up to Clarke for approval.

“Like that?”

“That’ll do.” Clarke picked up the boy’s hand and began wrapping gauze around it, carefully. 

“Okay. Will you change the wrapping tomorrow?”

Clarke nodded and Bellamy imagined her brief comforting smile before she spoke again. “Yep. Bring it back as close to this as you can, and I’ll get you a fresh bandage, yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Alright, get out of here.”

Bellamy pressed himself against the wall, and a moment later the sound of light footsteps sounded as the kid trotted down the hall. The ward was quiet as Clarke tidied up, folding the remaining gauze, washing her hands, cleaning the needles and separating thread.

“You can come in now, Bellamy.”

He sheepishly stepped into the light of the doorway. “How did you know it was me?”

“No one really waits to be asked in, around here. Not anymore.”

She turned around and looked at him, and Bellamy fought the urge to stuff his hands in his pockets and look away. 

He was glad she was okay. 

Wells’ dad had killed Bellamy’s mother, and then Bellamy had tried to kill Wells' dad; Bellamy had dropped out of classes before Wells was out of tutoring; when Wells had played chess, Bellamy had been working as a guard to get extra meals for Octavia...there wasn’t much that the pair had in common when they were captured. After their interrogations, Clarke was one of the few things they could talk about. When Wells grew weaker, Bellamy would say something offhandedly about how annoying the Griffin princess was, and Wells would launch into a defense. Bellamy wasn’t sure if Wells knew he was being goaded, but it would take the younger man’s mind off his pain. 

He defended her something fierce; Bellamy wondered if either of them knew he’d been in love with her. 

It was weird to see her, in front of him. Blonde hair like sunlight, bright eyes, tired, circles under them, her expression the lenient one that comes with exhaustion. 

But alive. 

She was looking at him, too, he realized, and he wondered what she saw. He wasn’t the guard that stowed away on the dropship, and he wasn’t the king that’d banded people together once they’d crashed. 

“Long time,” he said, and it was understatement.

“It has been,” Clarke said, and she turned her shoulders a bit, gesturing for him to sit. He didn’t, just leaned against the bench the kid had been sitting on. Clarke rolled over a stool from another side of the room and perched on it. “Nice presents you’ve been leaving.”

“Sorry about the first time.”

Clarke nodded, and he appreciated that she didn’t say ‘it’s okay’, when it hadn’t been. Monty and Miller had been shocklashed, and the rest of the hundred was given water instead of meals for the day. 

“The camp likes the rebrand,” she said instead. “You’re something of a hero around here.”

He shook his head. A hero would’ve figured out a way to get them out of there, not just pacify their current sufferings.

“That's not an opinion,” she said, and he looked up. Of course she’d read his dissent. She shrugged, like it was simple. “We’re both treating the symptoms, Bellamy. I do it from in here, you from out there.”

That wasn’t true at all, but he hadn’t come to fight.

“I don’t know--” he broke off, not sure where to start. “Where’s Jaha? When is he expected back?”

Her mouth set into a firm line, and she looked down. “We don’t know. He left a week after you and Wells disappeared...we thought he’d come back, but now we don’t know. He stopped responding to comms, and the last we heard from him was before you were back.”

She hesitated, and Bellamy knew it was coming. 

When he hadn’t been welcomed back, he hadn’t gotten to tell his story, let her, or anyone, know what had happened. It was hard to unlearn, the side of him that was used to reporting to her.

And there it was, the perfect opportunity. 

He just didn’t want to take it. 

“Were you…” Clarke’s voice was almost fragile, but she continued, “with him? For long? Or--” She broke off, blew out a quick breath, and ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t want to ask, Bellamy, but I have to know. What happened?”

Bellamy did put his hand in his pocket now, fingers feeling the cold silver. “He was brave,” he said quietly. “Fearless and determined. Till the end.”

She winced, and Bellamy wished he could take it back. It’d been months now, since they’d been gone and since he’d been back. She had to know, but it didn’t make the hearing any easier.

Clarke looked down. “I wish I could’ve been there.”

More than anything else in the world, Bellamy was grateful that she hadn’t been. He’d buried people, his people, and he’d done it with Clarke, but this would’ve been something else. The catching breath, the seeping floor, the whisper like a wind…

No, it was good that she didn’t see that. 

He pulled out the ring.

Clarke’s mouth opened slightly when she saw it. Her eyes darted up to his, flooding and swimming suddenly, but then she blinked and they were dry. “How did you…?”

“He gave it to me,” Bellamy said, and his throat felt tight. “Uh, at the end. Right before we made it out. It’s for you.”

Clarke’s hands came out and Bellamy placed the ring in her palms; she cradled it. “Did they tell you why?”

Bellamy wasn’t sure what she was asking, who they was, or what why she meant. “Um?”

“They took you,” she clarified. “Why they took either of you?”

Because we’re not grounder, he thought. And they saw what Kane would do before any of us believed it.

He shook his head.

Clarke looked at him and he knew she didn’t believe it. She drew a deep breath through her nose, like a gasp, and let it trickle out. “Thank you. For this.”

She meant the ring and the closure.

Bellamy nodded. “He made me promise.”

Clarke looked back up at him. “Promise?”

“Yeah. Swear to look after you.”

Her face crumpled; he hadn’t expected that. Bellamy didn’t know what to do, didn’t think too strongly, just pushed quietly away from the bench and towards Clarke. Sitting, her face was stomach high to him, and with the slightest invitation, she leaned into him. Her elbows clenched his sides, and he realized she was holding onto herself, around him, allowing herself only the slightest dependence on another, even in her grief. 

She was a quiet crier. 

If she wasn’t shaking and he hadn’t seen her face collapse, he wouldn’t have known she was even crying. She breathed like normal, but he felt a wetness from her tears through the front of his shirt. He patted her back lightly, just a reminder that someone was here, and felt that loss too. Not as keenly, not as great, but was with her.

“He was so good,” Clarke said, falteringly. “So good. Kind and smart until he was dumb.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy said, unhelpfully. “You meant the world to him.”

Clarke shuddered again.

Bellamy didn’t break the silence. He held her until the shaking stopped, realizing that somewhere along the line her hands had slipped from her elbows to clutching at his shirt. When he slowed his touch on her back, she drew in a deep breath, then a second, and pulled back.

She didn’t apologize.

They both knew she didn’t need to.

She looked down at the ring and slipped it over her thumb. It’d been on Wells’ pinkie but it was still large on her widest finger. 

Bellamy reached to the table behind her and picked up a roll of medical tape; without saying anything she handed over the ring. He wrapped a piece around the underside of it, twice, for thickness, then returned it to her. 

It fit more snugly. 

Clarke nodded a bit; didn’t say thank you, and they both knew she didn’t need to.

“So,” she cleared her throat, “this is you keeping that promise? Stealing from Kane to give to people who haven’t figured out how to fix this yet?”

“Something like that.”

“Wells would've loved that,” Clarke said quietly. “Always loved knights and their heroics. He’d be proud.”

And it wasn’t something Bellamy needed, the pride of a peer, but it still settled over him. 

“You too,” he said, hoping it meant something.

Clarke nodded. “Guess we keep on, then. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It was the same tone she’d used with the boy, telling him to come back with a bandage as clean as possible, and Bellamy understood the dismissal. 

“Alright. I’m off, then.”

He stood, and she did too, and she looked up at him for a minute. 

“There’s...no need to be scarce,” she said slowly, thoughtfully. “Bellamy.”

There were reasons, lots of reasons. His being there would mean she was in danger, would mean Kane could retaliate. Could mean getting caught and not being to help his people. But, in a way, that didn’t really matter. 

“I won’t be,” he found himself saying, and he hoped she knew that this promise was for her.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> I think I want to write a part II for this! Lean into Robin/Maid Marian and guerrilla warfare stuff lol. Hope you guys enjoyed it!
> 
> Also...how happily does it work out for John Murphy to be Little John?? And the title is from 'Not in Nottingham', from the 1973 Disney Robin Hood.


End file.
